In the mist of the revamping of my web space, I decided it needed a literary addition.  Therefore, I have decided to add a page entirely devoted to stories.  During certain seasons (as Halloween) I may include stories relating, time pertaining (Those periods always seem to be the times when all the teachers want to give exams at the exact same time).

Here is one piece I wrote for my Create Writing class, of which I am very proud.

Family Reunion

  It’s always an interesting time at my house around this time of the year, because every year, we hold a family reunion.  Everybody from my dad’s side of the family come from all over Ohio, here to Akron to stand around, and ignore everybody.  Very few people in our family will talk to each other.  The only reason they come is to show that they’ll come to my dad’s “Come Together” (Dad always tries to come up with some reason to start singing the Beatles).

My Great Aunt Bettricia has been staying at our house for the past few weeks, because the apartment building where she was living caught on fire, and she was left with nowhere else to live.  Aunt Bettricia is the oldest member of out family, and seems to be the only one who will still speak to anybody.  Her given name is Betty, but she’d always wanted to be named Patricia.  With all the conflict over the names, I became confused and finally started calling her Bettricia.  Of course, she thinks that I’m calling her Patricia, as her hearing is beginning to go.  Bettricia has been a member of history as far as I care.  During the 1940’s and ‘50s, she ran a butcher shop in downtown Cleveland.  From what she has told me though, dead cows and pigs were not the only things she chopped while criminal activity was taking place in the alley.  She was also the girlfriend of many of the men whom Elliot Ness is most famous for arresting.  My friends always enjoy listening to her stories.  That seems to be the only time they’re ever interested in history.  Aunt Bettricia always tries to dress for the current generation in time. Unfortunately, she got stuck in 1969.  This could be due to her shopping at the thrift store in the downtown hippie commune. She also constantly dyes her hair black.  She says it’s her natural hair color, but every time she buys dye, it’s always a different tint of black.

            My Aunt Judith is supposed to come on Saturday for the reunion.  Aunt Judith is quite an interesting character in our family, as she never wears any clothes that match, but despite this, the colors always seem to blend together, so nobody every bothers to mention anything to her.  She also always seems to have money whenever SHE needs it the most, but never has any when somebody else is in need.  This obviously is not portrayed by her unequal clothing options, or by her home, which from the outside quite resembles the old Haney place from “Green Acres.”  According to my aunt, she has a “brain infection,” which she got from eating a raw hamburger from “Hamburger Haven.”  This seems to be her excuse for everything she does, and especially for things she says she “didn’t do.”  Aunt Judith often calls people for no reason whatsoever, only to say she doesn’t recall ever being home, or near a phone.

            Aunt Judith is bringing my dog, Ringo.  Ringo is the oldest Irish setter I know, which is amazing, because he only has 3 legs, and goes everywhere wearing a neck brace.  He is the only dog I know that can walk into the street, get run over by a semi-truck, and still walk across the rest of the street, with only a scratch.  After seeing his miracles, nobody could figure out how he lost his leg in the first place, let alone break his neck and need a human neck brace.  Ringo has been cooped up at “The Moville Institution for Deranged Pets,” since last summer, due to his incessant purring and stubbornness.  We thought he believed he was a cat, but according to the veterinarians, he has lately been trying to slither underneath doors like a snake.

Terry is also coming, but I’ve heard there’s an important meeting “it” has to be at, so “it’ll” be coming late.  Terry is my transvestite aunt/uncle.  Nobody is really sure why Terry is the oddball in the family, but it has become the running joke of our gene pool ever since it was born.  Terry is especially rich, and enjoys showing this off by wearing expensive suits or dresses.  “It” lives is an enormous house in Columbus.  I have been in Terry’s home once, and was amazed by the bathroom.  It had a 20” wide-screen television in the bathroom!  Many say that it really a vault- Terry just shit money when seeing the Martha Stewart stocks drop.  Terry also has a son, Ben, whom it adopted as a community service project.  Ben has always been the love in Terry’s life, and it has always been one of its main goals to let everybody in the family know about their lives.  Every month a newsletter is sent out to the rest of the family to tell about the past month.  The newsletters have told everything from how Ben could spell his own name (at 5 years old, that is) to Ben jumping off the toy box and pretending to jump into an ocean of sharks (but he never seems to be able to swim though).

Aunt Linda will be coming, but her husband Louie won’t be able to come, because he is in prison after robbing the local pet shop in the middle of the night for some exotic snakes.  He’s supposed to be home in a few months.  Aunt Linda completes this odd couple.  Linda always dresses as if she has just been in some tragic disaster, in hope of getting some sort of settlement from anybody, or in case she has to be questioned about any of her other tricks.  They have never stayed in a house for more than a year or two, as they would have to pay rent.  To help with not paying, either one of them goes bankrupt every 6 months, and then move.  Aunt Linda has also conned cash settlements from different companies for various reasons.  Once, she claimed to have found bugs in the dog food she bought, and sued the dog food company.  She was able to get money from both the company and the grocery store with this case.

They also have two kids.  The oldest, Robby, has caused havoc throughout the world the longest.  He is currently in high school, but it was a hard way up.  He has both ADD and learning disabilities, which always seem to be the excuses for everything he does that had no connection with either.  Robby is best remembered by the time his younger brother, Donny, came to his mom in the middle of the night with 3 finger missing and blood dripping.  The two boys had gone to the kitchen and had been playing Live-Action Dungeons & Dragons with the knives.  The youngest child, Donny, has been kicked out of daycare at least 4 times a week until he started school, when he was immediately skipped ahead to the second grade, because none of the teachers would be anywhere near him.  Donny is best known for ordering and watching $40 of pornography on Pay-Per-View during middle of the night every night for a week, when only 9 years old.

My grandparents are also a piece of insanity.  They are the only family members who do not live in Ohio.  Or even in this country.  They live on the farthest point north in Canada.  They refuse to tell us what city they live in, or even where to find them, because the government might be listening.  Grandpa has always believed in government conspiracies, and still believes there are extra-terrestrials transplanted inside his head, but refuses to get an X-ray of his skull because the doctors would “use their fancy technology to make the creatures invisible.”  Recently, Grandma bought a new toaster because the “Toast-a-matic”, as Terry always calls it, from the 1920’s stopped working.  Grandpa immediately took it apart, searching for hidden cameras.  He still has not been able to reconstruct it.  This was the first piece of technology they’d bought since the ‘40s, and as it appears, will be the last, if Grandpa can’t get the toaster back together.  If he has it assembled correctly in time, they are supposed to be here, but knowing Grandpa’s workmanship, I don’t expect them.

My dad’s second cousin twice (or maybe three times) removed, Heather, is one of the few “normal” people in our family.  That is, except for the fact that she still insists that she was not born of this planet.  Since nobody can remember who her parents are, this theory can only be disputed by the fact that somehow she is related to us.  Heather has a daughter who is now two-years-old.  Her daughter has a name, but since Heather is convinced she is not human, she did not give her daughter a human name, so her “birth” grandparents will understand the name whenever they finally meet.  From what I have heard, Heather and her daughter will not be able to come to the family reunion this year.  Apparently, she is in jail because she got tired of her annoying downstairs neighbor, so she bought a rifle and shot him with three silver bullets.  She had a strange idea about him being a werewolf.

            My mom says she doesn’t ever want to have a family reunion of her side of the family.  In reality though, nobody will talk to her after our last gathering.  She had tried to help wash dishes, but her sister-in-law Daphne popped her head in, and insisted on doing them all without any help.  This enraged my mother that Daphne was not even a member of the family, but yet had to do everything, so mom decided to speak her mind.  My mother’s outrage led to most of her family refusing to speak to one another, especially us.  This part actually pleases me, because now I do not have to listen to Daphne joining into conversations where she isn’t wanted and talking as if she is the ultimate expert on the subject. 

This reunion is going to be wild enough; I’d hate to see what would happen if it involved Mom’s family.

Here’s possibly the beginning of a short story. I feel this it is good ending here, but have had many people tell me that they’d love to read further.

Yellow Submarine

The first time I heard the song, “Yellow Submarine,” was in Arkansas, during a cross-country trip with my father. We were in his yellow Volkswagen bus, which people always referred to as the yellow submarine, but until then, I had never quite understood what they meant.

This was the first time in over five months that I was getting to hang out with my dad for more than 24 hours without my mother coming around and bringing me home. My life had been like this since I was five. I was never told why they broke up, but just that I had to live with Mom. After that, I moved from Colorado to Ohio, where my mom got remarried, and I, in turn, got a new kid brother. I guess she figured if I had a new family, I would forget about my father, who she called the “skuzzy clown.” Every once in a while, my dad always came to see me, but I was only allowed to see him for a little bit before I was told to do my homework. This was usually the time I would overhear Mom slamming the door, and his car leaving the driveway.

And then I remember he called my house one day and asked me if I wanted to go to California with him to see Donald Duck, my favorite cartoon character. What could I say? I loved Donald Duck. He was so much better than Mickey or Goofy- he’s smart and he’s got a cool voice.

I asked Mom, and to my surprise, she said I could. She never let us hang out with each other before, but for some reason that I definitely wasn’t going to question, she was letting me now. I asked her if my kid brother could go too, but she said he wasn’t old enough to go, and he should stay home with her. This didn’t surprise me, but I was still pleased that I had permission.

And so, there was my father wearing his bright tye-dye shirt and vest and me in my jeans and Donald duck T-shirt, on the road, in our own “Yellow Submarine.” I had never been inside his bus before because Mom kept telling me that bad things happened in there that I don’t need to know about. From the looks of it, the inside of it was pretty normal. There was a bed in the back, and he even had a stove and a fridge. I never knew buses could have fridges! In the front, he had a strange tape player that he told me was called an “8-Track” player. That’s what was playing the song. Dad had gone to a bunch of garage sales and found the tapes because he couldn’t buy them at the store. I told him that that was weird because Mom always buys all my tapes at the store. He just laughed at me and told me these were different, but didn’t tell me why. I always wondered since then if that was what Mom was telling me, but I was never sure. All I really understood though is that in a couple days, I would get to meet Donald Duck, and in the meantime, I would be living in our own Yellow Submarine.